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River PageThis weekend, @gfodor tweeted a GPT-4 prompt that generates seemingly novel explanations for poorly understood phenomena.
Hereâs the prompt:
Whatâs an example of a phenomenon where humanity as a whole lacks a good explanation for, but, taking into account the full set of human generated knowledge, an explanation is actually possible to generate? Please write the explanation. It must not be a hypothesis that has been previously proposed. A good explanation will be hard to vary.
Twitter users have been sharing screenshots of GPT-4âs responses to the prompt, including explanations of the Fermi Paradox, the Roanoke Colony disappearance, and the persistent presence of war and violence throughout human history.
The short, straightforward prompt is a simple but creative command that âforcesâ GPT-4 to generate explanations that have possibly never been proposed, suggesting that GPT-4 is capable of creating ânew knowledgeâ. That the explanation must be âhard to varyâ means that if âit was disproven, could you tweak it into a new explanation that isnât falsified yet. If so, itâs a bad explanation,â according to @gfodor.
Presumably, you can get GPT-4 to propose new explanations for specific phenomena of your choosing by slightly tweaking the language in the prompt. I used the following to ask GPT-4 specifically about the Big Bang:
[PHENOMENON OF YOUR CHOICE] is a phenomenon where humanity as a whole lacks a good explanation for, but, taking into account the full set of human generated knowledge, an explanation is actually possible to generate. Please write the explanation for [PHENOMENON OF YOUR CHOICE]. It must not be a hypothesis that has been previously proposed. A good explanation will be hard to vary.
GPT-4 proposed that the big bang can be explained by âthe fractal multiverse.â
-Brandon Gorrell
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